"Surrender Yourself. Just Surrender Yourself."
Musings on surrender and becoming another way on the path of freedom & truth
This post has a plethora of personal video and audio resources that invite you into this experience on a deeper level. Explore, feel and honour what you are called towards and enjoy 🙏🏽🌬️
audio of the written post
In December of last year, I made the decision to be free.
I thought I had made this decision a long time ago: all of my career related work, acts of service, writing, etc. was directed towards liberation from the external systems and internal worldviews that I knew were imprisoning humanity and harming life, but there was always a quiet sense of disconnect I felt in these actions.
I knew that freedom was our inherent state of being, I knew that humanity had to untangle themselves from the tapestry of unfreedom woven through interconnected internal and external systems of domination, I knew a lot… but I had yet to commit my full way of being on this planet to this knowing.
Due to years of conditioning, I believed that I had to learn how to operate within systems of domination (most notably extractive capitalism and concepts of career) in order to survive and do the service work I yearned to do.
“I’m free. What am I going to do with that?” This video was filmed November 8th, 2023. I had just returned from a day at the museum and felt pulled between the life I was living and the life (yet unknown) that I yearned to live. This is my emotional processing of surrender and the beginnings of choosing freedom despite my fear.
But one truly fateful day in December, I realized two things:
that to truly love life in the full depth that I do and continue my commitment to integrity, it does not align to continue participating in systems and ways of being, thinking, etc. that do not support life
that even if I were to escape the prison of poverty that I was born into through becoming an entrepreneur, I would still be dependent on a system that depends upon the creation of poverty in order to survive. I would still depend on a system that I wanted no participation in in the first place.
There’s complexity here obviously and this is solely a reflection of my authenticity and integrity, but this realization helped me understand that these systems and the fears that I carried from them still had hold on my values and, most importantly, how it is I live and offer this gift of life to life.
Wealth and a life of meaning, to me, was never attached to the acquisition of money, possessions, accolades, titles, etc. because they’re all just concepts that we’ve given meaning and created consequence around.
For myself, wealth and a life of meaning is connected to how deeply I love, how freely, truthfully and present I live, and how connected I feel to the truth we all share as expressions of life.
And in that moment (which I filmed and captured because I knew it as an important catalyst that could determine how the rest of my story unfolds) I realized that the disconnect I felt was because I was trying to convince the world to choose liberation through my words instead of being free myself and letting that do the talking. And the subtleties of the identity I had formed by learning how to live in this world was trying to prove its worth by striving and “succeeding” in a path I did not choose with my full heart.
“If I’m not living in Truth, my service isn’t speaking Truth.” That fateful December day. I felt called to record this moment and I am grateful that I did. I pray to always remember this day. I hiked uphill for two hours crying and listening to "Defying Gravity" over and over again. Hahah! SO true.
Now, this choice to be free isn't one that's made once. I'm learning that freedom is a consistent choice - we have to make it in every moment and not just in what/how we do things, but also in our state of being. Since that day in December, the subtleties of this ego identity have been revealed to me, most notably in the drive to pick a certain path. Knowing this thought pattern I had, I made the commitment to myself to not choose the first path that seemed “secure” once I decided to be free.
Instead, I committed to waiting - staying open to what life offered me and my own sincere exploration of what it is I truly desired to experience - until I could feel the full-body yes that resonated with my soul. I found myself inspired by countless other paths of truth and authenticity, but I wanted to find my own and not recreate another's.
So I took note of the threads of inspiration I found (eg. commitment to sincerity, openness to life, travelling and learning, living completely immersed and absorbed in mama earth, creating from the soul, etc.) and began the process of creating the tapestry of my own authentic living.
Because of my commitment to staying open and trusting the integrity and callings of my heart, I was able to recognize magic and the perfect circumstances when it arrived.
I knew it was true because my heart was beating SO POWERFULLY and all I could feel was cheek-hurting joy even in the uncertainty. The magic life offered me wasn't a path with a known destination; it was simply a single step in the direction of my limitless and expansive truth.
this video was filmed 1/11 after i had the most magical connection with the place I will be taking my first external journey of freedom in. It's just joy, awe and laughter. I'm excited to share what comes through from this experience. But I'm even more excited to simply experience it for myself.
What was offered to me was so GOOD AND so TRUE and supported me in furthering my surrender to a life of magic. And amidst the many emotions this journey has held me into feeling (including surrendering the guilt I felt for choosing to live a life that feels sooo prosperous and free and juicy for me when all around me were people surrendering to the opposite... which I am still working on and feeling through), the magic hasn't stopped. There are no limitations to the magic life has to offer to life. I know that now.
This video was filmed on January 9th. This was magic. I'd been feeling this blocked excitement and joy and decided to dance in order to understand what was blocked and could not be communicated through words. Through this I accessed the needed flow of tears to support me in letting go AND embracing the new and true at the same time. I love this video. I see life in my eyes✨🙏🏽
I'm seeing now in ways that are undeniable to me that life yearns to respond to the callings of our hearts. I'm also learning that the calling of our heart’s require us to face our deepest fears so that we may find the freedom that transcends them because it can uncover who it is we truly are and have always been. It also shows us that we are everything we need on the path of freedom. It truly must happen within first.
I’ve known since before I could form thought that there was another way of being on this earth beyond what I saw. This knowing has never left me. It is the way that calls me now to not just know, but to walk that knowing with completeness and sincerity. It is this path - this internal calling that has been with me since my heart first beat- that I am committed to living.
an audio from 01/30/2024 on becoming the other/another way for collective liberation
This path has and will continue to require a consistent commitment to surrender all ideas of myself in order to uncover the truth of who I am so I can embrace the path of full joy and generosity in true service to this world and the life that I love.
There’s so much I could share and say, but I know there is time. I will continue to express and share all that arrives through me on this journey because I believe in the value it holds, but I want to close this post with a journal entry I wrote last month that captures my internal processing of the commitment I am making.
Thank you for reading and connecting thus far<3
01/11/2024
What if the very thing my ego fears is the very thing it needs? This yearning and search for a higher truth is equally a quest for the truth I am- the Truth I can consciously become in this lifetime. I can sense the ego resisting this and I am not choosing to fight that- I have no intentions to be at war with my whole being.
I’m curious of what it fears. Dying (symbolic and otherwise) is there, but there’s something deeper. No longer existing as I have? Not knowing what exists outside of who I have been up until this point? If I’m not striving to be what other people might see me as/their idea of my potential - who am I? Who can I become outside of all of these illusions? projections? ideas?
What happens when I drop the striving (and what am I striving for exactly?) and direct my energy to what rests here- this being, this heart and the truth it has always echoed that I now long (and only long) to hear. to expand with. to be guided by. That which I do not have to strive for, but need only surrender and open up to continuously…
All my striving has been directed to obtain freedom - for myself, my family, for the world- and in the process it has imprisoned me. It has imprisoned me for so long that even though the bars are gone and I feel the open air calling to me and know its caress on my skin, I feel a part of me choosing to stay where the walls previously trapped me in. The memory of it like a phantom limb.
But there is no freedom for me in boxes. There is no life for me in these walls. If I reach out, I can feel that they are no longer there.
Death is certain.
There’s the death of staying (which I am absofruitly not choosing), of performing and trying to find that which I seek in a life that suffocates me. Dying while alive - in a life without passion or purpose or meaning. A life reflective of lies and misinterpretations of who I am. A life of conscious disconnect from the soul and spark of life within me. A limited life. A life of striving and never obtaining the truth of what I seek (ya… that is not even an option).
And there’s the other death. The death of who I have been (and believed to be the unquestionable truth of who I am). A necessary sacrifice to walk a true path of freedom in the truth I uncover in letting go- no… choosing in thought word and action- to let all else fall away. This is the death I choose now and forevermore.
The ego and its idea of self has been disconnected from the truth for so long that it has come to fear it. But nothing loves as fiercely and frees as quickly as Truth.
There is no truth for me to seek or strive to find. It is already here - knocking patiently on that door within. Offering me the opportunity to surrender to it and let it out. To be renewed fully in the truth it is and the truth of who I am.
Cycles of death are necessary for the renewal of life.